The ‘frustrating’ Leinster lesson Northampton Saints are taking into Premiership final

England wing Tommy Freeman insists Northampton Saints have heeded the lessons from their Champions Cup defeat to Leinster ahead of Saturday’s Premiership final.

The table toppers booked their place in the domestic final last weekend by beating Saracens 22-20 as a strong start to the game helped them win the semi-final.

However, such an impressive opening was not evident against Leinster in their European knockout clash as the Irish province went 20-3 up before Saints clicked.

Narrow defeat

The fightback was too little too late though for Phil Dowson’s charges as Leinster held on to win 20-17 and subsequently booked a spot in the Champions Cup final.

Freeman admits it was “frustrating” to know exactly why they came up short against Leo Cullen’s men at Croke Park and stressed the Saints have learned from it.

“It got brought up on Monday,” he said. “It was on a big stage and we knew how it felt, so it’s been about connecting those emotions and not wanting to feel that again.

“Croke Park was a tough arena to go to. The frustrating thing from that game was we could have done it if we had put our game on the park a little bit sooner. If we were more physical from the off, we would have come away with something.

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“That gives us confidence going into Saturday – we know that when we get our game right, we are hard to stop.

“We’re always learning – there are games that we’ve won that we’ve learned from as well. But the two big games at Croke Park and against Harlequins at Twickenham will help us a lot.”

Northampton have been a breath of fresh air this season with their silky attack complimented by a steely defence that saw them finish top of the Premiership standings.

England international Freeman admits that backing up their attack with “fight” out of possession has been key and praised the influence of defence coach Lee Radford.

“Lee coming in has been a massive help,” he said ahead of the Bath clash. “He’s given us that fight that means we fighting to the end of every fixture. You saw that at Munster.

“Even when we’ve been on top of teams, there’s been a history of us taking the foot off the gas a little bit and that’s changed this season. Now we keep our foot on the gas or claw back if we’re behind.”

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